The Half In Ten Campaign

On Tuesday, a coalition of four national advocacy organizations --  the Center for American Progress Action Fund,  ACORN, the Coalition on Human Needs and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights -- launched the Half in Ten campaign, a vigorous and concerted effort to cut the number of Americans living in poverty by 50 percent within ten years. Currently, one in every eight Americans, or 36.5 million people, live in poverty. Under the leadership of former senator John Edwards, the campaign, Half in Ten: From Poverty to Prosperity, seeks to unite a broad range of groups and individuals across the country in order to make this goal a reality. The foundation of the campaign rests on basic fundamental principles: promoting decent work, providing opportunity for all, ensuring economic security, and helping people build wealth. Combining federal, state, and public education agendas, the campaign is guided by the policy recommendations of the Center for American Progress's 2007 Poverty Task Force Report, which issued twelve recommendations including expanding tax credits, eliminating predatory lending, and ensuring that workers have the right to form unions through the Employee Free Choice Act. Half in Ten will advocate expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, raising the minimum wage, increasing the availability of child care assistance to low-income families, and increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance. In his kick-off speech in Philadelphia last Tuesday, Edwards spelled out the essence of campaign: "This is not just about highlighting the problem. It is also about highlighting the solutions -- because this is a problem we can solve." 

CHANGING THE GOVERNMENT: The very policies designed to prop up low-wage workers, unemployment insurance and tax credits, typically don't reach the poorest Americans who most need them. Restrictive rules often prevent part time and temporary employees -- the lowest paid and most poor workers -- from receiving unemployment benefits. Half in Ten recognizes that unemployment reform would bring an additional 560,000 largely low-income people into the system, distributing $1.03 billion in benefits and job training. The Child Tax Credit (CTC) currently excludes many of the least affluent Americans. Restrictions on the CTC mean that claimants with low or no tax liability, who make the most meager wages, are unable to receive any assistance. The Urban Institute estimates that 2.1 million children and 1.1 million parents would break through the poverty line if the federal CTC were made fully refundable. Finally, Half in Ten will work to provide childcare assistance. The campaign will work to obtain a federal-state guarantee of child care assistance for all working families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line and an expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. These expansions of childcare assistance would lift 2.7 million Americans out of poverty, reducing poverty by almost 8 percent, according to estimates by the Urban Institute. Half in Ten will continue to push the Senate, the House and the presidential candidates until they commit to these important federal changes.

CHANGING STATES: Over the past ten years, the minimum wage has been successfully raised in 32 states, and with the recently-passed federal increase, the minimum wage will rise to $7.25 by 2009. Unfortunately, skyrocketing gas prices, the soaring cost of food, and the high price tags on everyday consumer goods mean that $7.25 is still not enough. Although the federal efforts of Half in Ten call for a significant further increase in the minimum wage, the campaign stresses that states must act in the meantime to fill the gap and help build momentum for greater federal action. According to recent studies, raising the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average American wage would bring an estimated 1.7 million people out poverty.  Additionally, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), designed to reward work and raise the incomes of low-earning families, is also in need of revision. The EITC provides only a small monetary benefit to childless adults and none to childless workers younger than 25. By simply expanding the tax credit to include young workers and those without children, an additional 2.2 million Americans could be lifted out of poverty. At the urging of ACORN and other community activists, Washington state has pioneered a new program that invests in families and provides an EITC, despite the fact that it does not collect statewide income taxes. 

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS: The Half in Ten campaign aims to inspire Americans to understand they can do something about poverty and that when poverty is eliminated, the nation will be stronger, more prosperous and better off. Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, explained last Tuesday, "Poverty sounds big and complex, yet by making some simple legislative changes, we can immediately lift thousands of people out of poverty. But we know to be successful this can't just be an inside the Beltway, pointy-headed intellectual conversation." Edwards, along with all the coalition members, will be traveling around the country over the next ten years to increase awareness about the campaign. Supporting state fights, meeting with policy makers, and most importantly, continuing to build peoples' knowledge about the importance of poverty alleviation and the solutions that already exist, Half in Ten aims to provide a new narrative that encourages, inspires, and creates a mandate for action. "We've made great strides before," said Edwards. "In the past, when we have chosen to take up the cause of our brothers and sisters who are struggling to get by, we have helped millions of Americans to lift themselves out of poverty. Today, if we get behind the practical, work-based solutions this campaign has proposed, we can do it again."

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Yesterday, the House "approved an expansive new veterans education benefit that would be paid for by a tax on affluent Americans."

ARIZONA: Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) vetoes legislature's "attempt to derail pollution-reducing policies from state agencies."

IOWA: Immigrants caught in "the nation's largest single-site immigration raid" have been moved into nearly a dozen jails scattered throughout the state.

MASSACHUSETTS: After California's gay marriage ruling, activists say "Massachusetts is about to be thrust into the spotlight again."

THINK PROGRESS: MSNBC's Chris Matthews stumps right-wing radio host: "Tell me what Chamberlain did?" "I don't know."

WONK ROOM: President Bush tries to distract from the conservative record on terrorism.

MEDIA MATTERS: Fox News's Bill O'Reilly compares Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas to white supremacist David Duke.

"Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people."
-- Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), 5/16/08, on the California gay marriage decision

VERSUS

"The appointments are confirmed by the public at the next general election; justices also come before voters at the end of their 12-year terms"
-- SmartVoter.org, on the California Supreme Court